Take a deep breath in.
Let it go.
Inhale,
Filling your body with life and breath.
Let all of it go.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
I had a rough couple of years recently,
And one of the things I did during that time was to gather bits of wisdom,
Like a bird gathering pieces of string or tiny twigs to build myself a kind of mental nest,
A place I could climb into and find comfort.
I would scribble down these gems in notebooks that I kept by my bed,
By my reading chair,
And in my purse.
I gathered these wise seeds from all kinds of different places,
A piece of paper attached to my ginger tea,
Things I read in books or magazines,
Or words that friends wrote to help me survive.
Now when things happen that are hard,
Or when I want to reframe the thoughts in my head,
I still find myself returning to these notebooks,
And time and again they help me release and reset so I can step more fully into my wise self and find comfort for the parts of me that are hurting.
I thought I could offer you some of my favorites,
And these might not always be direct quotations.
I think they might be,
But just to put that caveat in there.
So I will read one and stay silent for a few moments before I move on to the next.
The idea is that one or two of these might connect with where you are right now,
And so help you to release and reset.
So let's begin.
Inhale and exhale.
The first is from Lao Tzu,
Which I have written in two different notebooks.
Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?
From William Stafford,
It is too late now for earlier ways.
Now there are only some other ways and only one way to find them.
Fail.
From Robert Lacks,
Learn slowly to be wise.
From Joe Hill,
This is a long,
Slow,
Get well time.
From Brian,
A yoga student of mine that has been with me since my very first class.
On your way,
The road will teach.
From Kurt Vonnegut,
We must continually throw ourselves off cliffs and develop our wings on the way down.
From the book Buddha's Brain,
You hold your future self in your hands,
And what it will be depends on how you care for it.
Tend to the causes of a better future.
From Jamie Attenberg,
Ask how do I want to feel today?
The answer should never be bad.
And here are three from my emotional Sherpa,
Len.
When we're going through a hellish period of life,
We can't know how much we're growing and getting stronger as we go through it.
That awareness comes later.
In the midst of the hell,
All we can do is keep going.
Do what needs to be done on the plane of ordinary reality and frame it mentally in as healthy a way as possible.
And let every strategy you try have love and hope in it.
If you do,
Then you can never fail at the level of soul work.
And there is plenty of plenty.
From the wide Sargasso Sea,
There are more ways than one of being happy.
From my ginger tea,
My great happiness is based on the warmth of my heart.
From Paulo Coelho,
And when you can't go back,
You have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.
And from Viktor Frankl,
What we radiate into the world,
The waves that move from our being,
That is what will remain of us when our being itself has long since passed away.
Inhale,
Exhale.
Namaste.
